It's all about Grace

A mate of mine is a Senior Minster of a church that was thinking about changing its name to “Grace Church”.  

He wisely carried out some focus groups in his community and found that almost everyone thought it was referring to a woman’s name.  Very few outside the church community had any idea that it might be referring to God doing us a favour.

As I was preparing some talks on how to live God’s way as we looked at our five purposes as a church it struck me how easy it is even for us regular church goers to fall back in to trying to earn God’s approval. 

We know that we join God’s family by God’s free gift but then we assume that we continue in his favour by our good life, and it’s all too easy to fall into that trap in the pulpit.  The truth is that we enter God’s family by His free gift and we continue to stay in His family by His free gift. It’s all about grace. Thank God for that otherwise we’d all be in strife.

So where does the “living a good life” thing fit in? Well, to go back to the family analogy, in my better moments I want to do things to serve my family because I love them.  It’s a joy to serve them. I get so disappointed when I realise that I’ve failed them, or when my failure is pointed out to me. 

Likewise it is a joy to obey our God. David put it so well in Psalm 19:8 “The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.”

By Bruce Dingwall, Senior Minister

Our Health Check Results

Over December 2014 we took our pulse.  We asked you to complete a quick ‘health check’ survey and let us know how you think our church is going. 

Here’s what you said…

You think that our church is good at Bible focused teaching (86% of you said so), preaching (81% of you think we are good at this) and Bible Study / Growth Groups (68% of you).    This is great news.  Ensuring the Gospel message is at the heart of all our proclamation and teaching is one of our core values.

It’s also fantastic news that 89% of you said that yes, you would bring a friend to church. This was reinforced in the comments.  For example, ‘solid, gospel focused teaching, ‘and, ‘a warm environment for a visitor,’ and ‘I’m proud of our church and want to encourage my friends to become Christians’. 

Having said that, we are falling well short of hitting our goal of doubling in size by the end of 2016.  (That would mean 1,100 people in attendance weekly.)  We need to investigate why we are happy to invite our friends, yet we are a long way from achieving growth targets.

One way we can possibly help is by holding special events to which we can invite people. 48% of you said it would be a good idea to hold events on depression and anxiety.  Well, watch this space – we are planning something on this for the near future.  Other popular suggestions for special event topics were on women, worry and busy life syndrome and more men’s events.

Overwhelmingly, the survey was full of positive comments about our church.  There was of course some constructive criticism – and we thank you for this – we need to hear it and want to continually improve.  There weren’t any key patterns in this – comments varied from looking at how we can become more involved with the local community to how we can make people feel more welcome and including music that is more Christ centred. 

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey.  Please be assured that your comments are taken seriously by the team. We want to stay focused on our vision of introducing Jesus, changing lives, by regularly reviewing all that we do, so expect some more brief surveys in the future.  

By Stella Brown, Communications Manager

The Bali Two

We can’t get away from the impending execution of the Bali Two - Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Everyone, it seems, has a view.

The old biblical idea of “an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth” was meant to be a principal that stopped people going too far in their anger and desire for “Justice”.  It put limits, even on the state,  on the desire for vengeance – “you can go this far in your punishment of wrong-doing but no further.”
Each nation, and often states within nations, decide what is appropriate when it come to the ultimate punishment.

Drug dealing is a terrible crime. It pushes evil at the expense of lives to make money. (Not a lot of difference with gambling to my mind but that is another issue.)  Those who engage in pushing drugs deserve to be punished. No one disagrees with that.  The issue is whether or not the death penalty is appropriate.

A nation has every right to come up with its own set of penalties and execution does not of itself contradict the Bible’s command not to commit murder.  In the Bible murder is unlawful killing – taking the law into your own hands.  It does not include lawful execution. 

However, it is so final and I for one would not wish to consign a person to God’s final judgment without giving them every opportunity and all the time possible to repent.  And that is not taking into account the fact that a disturbing number of people have been executed over the years who were innocent.  

Furthermore, the death penalty punishes the innocent family.  You could argue that any alternative to the death penalty would do that as well, but the families of these two men seem to be saying very clearly that the death penalty will hurt them far more than life imprisonment. Not being in their shoes I’m in no position to disagree.

In the end we need to be sure that doing something that is “legal” does not diminish us as human beings or as a society.

By Bruce Dingwall, Senior Minister